- Country: Canada
- Style: Progressive metal / Avant-garde metal
- Label: InsideOut Music
- Release date: 29 March 2019
Where do you even start? Three drummers (Morgan Ågren, Anup Sastry and Samus Paulicelli), a choir, an orchestra, Steve Vai, Anneke van Giersbergen, and yes, Chad Kroeger, all crammed into one record that swings from cartoon pop to blast beats inside a single song. Empath is Devin with every door open at once, and for long stretches it’s thrilling.
“Genesis” is the mission statement: it lurches between styles so often you stop counting, yet the hooks hold it together. “Spirits Will Collide” is the big-hearted anthem, built for arenas, while “Evermore” and “Sprite” sit in that euphoric middle ground where the wall of sound feels like weather. Then “Hear Me” arrives and flattens everything, one of the heaviest things he’s put his name to in years.
The flip side is that the album can wear you out. “Borderlands” wanders, and the 23-minute “Singularity” has moments of genuine magic buried among passages that feel more like sketchbook than song. Mike Keneally’s steady hand keeps the chaos playable, but there are points where a little editing would have helped.
Still, nobody else makes records like this. Exhausting, generous, occasionally ridiculous, and far more often brilliant.
Best tracks:
Genesis
Spirits Will Collide
Evermore
Hear Me
Author’s rating: 8.6/10
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